The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the preview, robed followers charge on pig‑back while wielding machine guns, culminating in a nightmarish vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous snake gun.
"One of the team members’ kids came up with the idea and asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that lets us scale weapons in minutes, so I whipped up a snake‑gun in about half an hour. The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls.
That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small, high‑fidelity project to emerge from a modest team. "We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told ourselves, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve people can do it.’ Everyone else thought we were crazy." The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on shoestring budgets.
"We come from indie film backgrounds, where we constantly punch above our weight," Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the runway to finish the game. Wolf Haus’s founders have deep ties to Hollywood. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West.
Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. The seed of Join Us grew from Dietsch’s experiments in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with it using YouTube tutorials," he says.
Though he had never built a game before, he managed a couple of small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger. The concept—a doomsday cult simulator that fuses survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema—kept pulling him back. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would eventually hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner studio, for further development.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire. But a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, changed his plans.
"He said a friend had made a video game and wanted me to look at it. The demo blew my mind and pulled me out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor. Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was funding—an especially tough task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, receiving polite interest but little cash. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh believes the CAA connection, alongside veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand, was crucial. "My agent Derek Douglas, who handled my game work for 12 years, also heads the video‑game department at William Morris, which opened doors," he notes.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff. "We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and wanted to keep a tight, collaborative culture where everyone’s voice matters," says Dietsch. To make such an ambitious title feasible for a small crew, the studio invested heavily in internal tools early on. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive open world without the project collapsing under its own weight," Dietsch explains. This tooling phase consumed much of the first year, running in parallel with core game design. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment is essentially self‑funding for the game," Wendschuh says.
While a modest amount of project finance is being used for marketing, the development itself was covered by the equity partners. "Because our investors benefit from the studio’s enterprise value, they support our tool‑building ethos. When we hit an unknown problem, we simply create a custom tool to solve it.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to produce a game of this scale." When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate core content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he says. Wendschuh adds that the team only uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for art, design, or narrative.
Even Krafton, which has branded itself an "AI‑first" company, insisted that Wolf Haus stay clear of generative AI in the creative pipeline. "Our investors wanted assurance we weren’t using AI to replace human creators," Wendschuh notes, echoing a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content is evident in the six‑kilometre‑square map, which was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors. "Those details mattered to us, even as a small indie," Dietsch affirms.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and games. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director ever sees a set. In games, an inspiration can be prototyped within hours. "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh points out that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for a handful of A‑list talent, making independent success difficult.
By contrast, the gaming landscape has fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without needing celebrity endorsements. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to launch a hit game," he explains. Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games—it came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas. I learned programming on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been drawn to both mediums. Ultimately, whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re creating an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. That core purpose never changes," Dietsch concludes.